If You See Him, Kill Him: Hitman’s First Elusive Target

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The first ‘Elusive Target’ is now roaming the world of Hitman [official site], for 48 hours only. Miss this window or screw it up and he’ll be gone forever, living happily unmurdered – and you don’t want that, do you? The wait for Hitman’s second episode was well worth it, but the plan is for bits of “live content” like this to help keep the game interesting in-between and onwards.

As the announcement explains, Elusive Targets are meant to be challenging. Ian Hitman’s targets don’t appear on the minimap and aren’t highlighted in ‘Instinct’ vision, so it’s trickier to track them down and figure out when to strike. You can’t replay the contracts, and if you fluff the hit you’ll never see them in the game again.

“An Elusive Target is the closest thing to the Hitman fantasy that we’ve ever created,” IO say. “Each one is a custom-created character with their own backstory and their own unique reason for being in that location.”

This first contract was announced earlier this week, but notice on future Elusive Targets may be shorter and the time they’re around for may vary. Killing five Elusive Targets over the coming months will get Ian the Hitman: Absolution suit, ten will give him his Blood Money suit, and versions of those with gloves will be coming in the future.

Your first man is Sergei Larin, an art forger hanging around Paris. You have until 5pm (that’s 6pm CEST, 9am PDT) on Sunday to kill him. Watch for this guy:

21 Comments

While killing this guy took me 17 minutes in game (most of it working out where he was) it was some of the most exciting 17 minutes i’ve had playing Hitman so far. The only drawback is you cant replay it if you complete the contract, rendering getting the unique feats and assassinations rather pointless.

Wouldnt the inclusion of replayability remove some of the that excitement?
It’s like hardcore mode in minecraft. You know that if you die, thats it. That ups the excitement ante so much that it turns a relaxing game into total survival horror.

Yeah, I’ve just played it and knowing that I only had one chance made it very special.

The dude was hilarious, but man, he was so hard to track. I tried to poison him, but he wouldn’t drink the wine, then he started walking around and was a pain to reach. So… I placed an explosive charge near a painting and he went to inspect it. R.I.P Sergei, you were a beautiful man.

I started in my usual place, wandered round a corner and basically bumped into him instantly. Took out a loitering employee, lured his bodyguard into the next room with a coin and choked him out, and then just walked up to Sergei and shot him in the back. The whole thing took four minutes. It was, however, QUITE EXCITING.

Its great to see opinion for this game swing so heavily, it seems like this gradual release of new content really suits the game. Whether it was a deliberate plan or just the necessity of not having the whole game done and money running out I don’t know but good for them.

It’s not immaterial, though. When you’re offline you don’t have access to most of your planning options – you don’t get to use all the weapons, caches, start locations etc that you’ve unlocked by accumulating Mastery – and I can’t see a good reason for that at all.

DRM is excusable when the game first comes out, that’s when the devs make the most profit. But hopefully they later make it offline. Also a hitman simulators target audience probably wouldn’t blink pirating this game if they could or if it was easy to do. gog.com in contrast targets a fairly older and wealthier audience.

Target eliminated with extreme prejudice. As well as all the kitchen staff, secuirty on the basement, first and second floor, a couple of unfortunate waiters that went to get more wine at the wrong time, and the Sheik’s security detail. Ian hitman is a thorough, if not invisible, assassin.

This whole “live content” in single-player thing is interesting, and I can see why it would be exciting, especially with only one chance to get it right.

I wonder, though, how this would work if I bought the game in a year’s time. Will I have missed out on this content and therefore be getting a lesser experience, or will they repeat it at some point? I very, very rarely buy new games because I simply can’t afford to. I think I would like it better if it was more like a free DLC that added the mission temporarily, from whenever you choose to activate it.

That way, if you’re part of the crowd playing it “live”, you can still try the mission as soon as they release it and talk to your friends about it etc, but if you’re playing the game 6/12/24 months later, you’re not missing out.

I have had to swear off time sensitive games. Raid timers, limited time events, energy systems that replenish over real time, tilling crops or missions on a particular schedule, all ways that get me playing when I don’t necessarily want to right now. This just feels like a new system that wants me to play the game on the game’s schedule for me to play optimally. Now having a fear of missing out just has me go find somewhere else to play instead. I will miss experiences like this, but they just don’t fit what I need a game to be.